apricot

The Apple Lisa had preemptive multitasking years before the Amiga.

I like that AC1D1C is red but BA51C is green. Hex code litmus paper.

“A temporary $2 fee will be added to offset macroeconomic pressures.”

Hey Mr. Restauranteur, guess what, I also suffer from macroeconomic pressures. I'll have $5 plz. Gotta offset.

Yes, an HP-32SII RPN calculator. I teach math and sometimes have to do some calculations while lecturing. My fingers know how to do RPN by themselves, so I can use the calculator blind while continuing to speak. This can be a good trick to impress students. (They would be much less impressed if they ever saw me try to use a non-RPN calculator and fail at simple things.)

The calculator also comes in handy for tallying marks on exams, and it's much more pleasant to use than a calculator app on the computer. I do have Free42 installed everywhere but I don't use it that much.

> collapsed arrows

Yes. Who ever thought making up and down arrow keys so small was a good idea? They are high usage keys, and every time I'm on a laptop keyboard like that, I cringe whenever I use the arrow keys.

In fact, the keyboard is the first thing I look at when I'm in the market for a laptop. Small arrow keys = pass, I won't even look at the specs or price.

I misread it as "Commodore 64" and got very curious...

That's the best name I can imagine for an anvil.

"I'm behind seven proxies, two fish tanks, a doorbell, and a Korean dishwasher."

From the article: « Proponents say the law helps ensure Israel's security and maintains its "Jewish character". »

Which is eerily similar to the arguments in favor of the 1935 "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour" (Nurenberg laws) in Germany, which forbade marriage between Germans and Jews.

I love the fact that it comes with a "CMOC for Basic Programmers" manual.

http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc-for-basic-programme...

Once in a blue moon I'll feel nostalgic and go see if the web sites for some of my favorite software in the 1990s are still up. ARJ software is one of my regular stops, and so are Semware [1] (I basically lived in QEdit, back in the day) and JP Software [2] (makers of the 4DOS shell).

[1] http://www.semware.com/

[2] https://jpsoft.com/

I used to feel vaguely guilty (in a "there-are-starving-children-in-Africa" kind of way) when I didn't read the entirety of the issue I had paid for, but eventually I realized it didn't make any sense.

Sometimes I read almost the whole thing, but there are weeks when I skip more than 80% of the contents because of no time. One issue I'll always read cover to cover, though, is the Christmas special.

I subscribe to the Economist. My subscription lasts one year, and doesn't automatically renew. I get renewal reminders and renew at my leisure. None of that arguing with people on the phone.

Slower than a Pi, and it's not even close... ouch

> I feel zero guilt about ad blocking.

The amount of guilt I feel about ad blocking is equal to the amount of guilt advertisers feel about bothering me with their ads.

My son is using the Apple ][+ my dad bought in 1979 to play games, learn assembly language, and he even wrote a school paper with Apple Writer. Not quite 50 years yet, but getting close.

Exactly. And that's why teaching programming to kids is important. Because nothing teaches you the fundamentals of something like having to explain it to a computer.

Wait, they had Cheetos lip balm and I missed it?

When I was a kid, it was "obvious" to me that dark green and light green were two completely different colors, and it frustrated me to no end that people wouldn't agree with me, yet insist that pink and red were different colors.

The 2600 was designed to be a Pong and Combat machine. Players, missiles, balls, background. Its designers had absolutely no idea programmers would write things like Adventure and Pitfall for it.

+1 for The Friendly Orange Glow.

Also interesting: Konrad Zuse's "The Computer, My Life".

I've been known to get up and code whenever something was too slow on the toilet.

I imagine January is A and November is K, so 21A11 vs. 21K1 (or maybe 21K01).

I call it the habanero trap. There is no ñ in "habanero", yet a lot of people say "habanyero", probably by analogy with "jalapeño".

That's funny because the first operating system I used (Apple DOS 3.3) was very liberal about file names. There was a 30-character limit which was a lot, and it didn't mind spaces in file names. Even control characters were fair game, which made things fun when you accidentally inserted a ^A in a SAVE command.

I'm of the opinion that kebab-case is the best case for all identifiers, because it's easy to read and to type. As always, Lispers were right all along.

By this point, I'm pretty sure there are people at gnome who compete to see who will make the stupidest suggestion that gets put in production.

The problem is we're optimizing for "easy to learn" rather than "easy to use".

The best mouse for me is the 3DConnexion CadMouse Wireless. And the reason for this is that the mouse actually has three real buttons on top, in addition to a wheel.

Yes, you read that correctly, the middle button is a real button, not a wheel that you click. This is a game changer for me, and I am very glad that I found this mouse.

The wheel, which is nestled between the left and the middle button, is also clickable, and can be configured to be an alias for the middle button or a separate button. (There are also two side buttons and one more button on top, but I never use those.)

It fits with GPD's reputation of not caring much about quality control.